From the open publishing newswire:
The Anarchist Radio Berlin made an interview with the Russian-speaking anarchist publishing cooperative Radical Theory and Practice (RTP) about the cooperative, its recent project of translating Emma Goldman's memoires into Russian and a lot more.
You'll find the audio (to listen online or download in different sizes) here: link to aradio.blogsport.de

Our one-day protest became a four-day blockade of an Israeli cargo ship in the Port of Oakland. This was during the Israeli assault on Gaza, in which over 2,000 Palestinians were slaughtered. We were responding to Israel's war crimes, taking this action to very graphically show the world that Israeli ships and goods are not welcome here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was one of the many people who walked the picket lines at the docks; this is my day-to-day account of events from the 16th to the 20th of August, 2014.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2014

We were going to march into the Port of Oakland this morning at 5 a.m. and "Block the Boat." That is, we'd set up picket lines, asking the dockworkers not to cross, not to go and unload the Israeli ship ZIM Piraeus. However, the ship changed its arrival time, presumably to avoid the picketing, so the demonstration was rescheduled for 3 p.m. This was the second time this event was rescheduled, and that was annoying. Nevertheless, I really hate getting up in the morning and so do a lot of people. It's hard to get a large number of people -- critical mass -- to come down to the port at such an hour, and in the pre-dawn darkness. There'd be a lot more people in the afternoon.

From the open publishing newswire:
REPOST: On Thursday, May 15, the city of Portland got rid of $9 million, or 25 percent, of its investments in Walmart. This marks the beginning of a divestment program that will purge Portland's investment portfolio of $36 million in Walmart bonds by 2016, according to a press release. The divestment plan is part of the city's responsible investment initiative, introduced by City Commissioner Steve Novick, and adopted in October 2013. The initiative also prohibits the city from purchasing Walmart bonds in the future.

Date: Friday, January 31, 2014Place: Across North AmericaNo more NAFTA Â 20 Years is Enough!

This is a call to action for communities throughout Mexico, Canada and the United States to join together on January 31, 2014, and say "ENOUGH!" to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other corporate "trade" deals.

RELATED PIMC POST:Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad ideaNAFTA has shown a sure result of free trade agreements is they punish and benefit certain sectors of various societies. The Trans Pacific Partnership is a similar bad idea that will enrich the elite rich at the expense of the middle classes.H. Ross Perot, the independent candidate for US president in 1992, said if NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, were passed you would hear a "giant sucking sound" as jobs left the US for Mexico.

Well, there was no giant sucking sound caused by an immediate job loss after Clinton won the election and NAFTA was passed in 1994; but since then NAFTA has caused the destruction of hundreds of thousands of good middle class manufacturing jobs in the US that were sent to Mexico, causing the erstwhile holders of those jobs in the US to be displaced to lower class service jobs.

The so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as secret as it is, is apparently little more than another trade agreement among nine nations, including the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Peru and others, and most likely will produce the same results in the US as NAFTA, hollowing out even more middle class manufacturing jobs that have survived in the US.

From the open publishing newswire:And Obama is cut precisely out of that mold of Clinton. The Democratic party, in Europe, would be considered a far-right party. Obama's assault on civil liberties has been far worse than under George W. Bush: an absolutely remarkable fact. The FISA Amendment Act, which retroactively makes legal what, under our Constitution, has traditionally been illegal: the warrantless wiretapping, monitoring, and eavesdropping of tens of millions of American citizens. The radical - and I think most dispassionate legal scholars would go, inappropriate -interpretation of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force act as giving the government the right to assassinate American citizens... and of course I'm speaking about Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric... and not, incidentally, his 16-year-old son, two weeks later, who was on no terrorism list at all.

From the open publishing newswire:
The Portland Chapter of the Social Welfare Action Alliance and the Portland State University School of Social Work are holding their third Community Based Practice Conference "Voices on the Ground." This year's theme is Resistance and Resilience.The event is being held Saturday, June 1st at PSU School of Social Work

On Saturday, June 1st, 2013 at Portland State University's School of Social Work, a one-day conference will be held on the theme: Â"Voices on the Ground: Resistance and Resilience"

Hosts of this event include:Â School of Social Work, Portland State University (Community-Based Practice Concentration)Â Social Welfare Action Alliance - Portland Chapter

This third annual gathering seeks to build a network of community-oriented practitioners, and to help catalyze and consolidate community social work in the region. All are invited to attend and participate, including human service workers, activists, service users, students, academics, and other allies.

This year our theme is "Resistance and Resilience", and we are organizing around the focus areas of Human Rights, Criminalization, Revolutionary Tools and Margin to Center:

We are very proud to announce our keynote speaker, Ethel Long-Scott! Registration information available on the conference website: http://tinyurl.com/voicesontheground. While this is a fee-based event, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

From the open publishing newswire:
Look for more "let's you and him fight" from Trimet. Why play along?
Trimet is a top-heavy bureaucracy with some expensive habits. It has 161 managers, believe it or not. Yep, lil' ol Trimet. Fifty-five of those managers get over $100K. Many of them get a lot more--like a quarter million per year.

Bus service has been cut back to pay for this army of overseers, and to fund $9 million in remodeling and new furniture. The top three floors of the Center Garage building, at 4012 SE 17th, stand empty. Apparently they were not good enough for the managerial class. Meanwhile the new buses are getting a cosmetic retrofit to look like Max trains; that will cost $2 million.

For the last several years, we bus drivers have been told we want too much. We have agreed to freeze our wages for many years now, on the proviso that our retirees continue to get the health benefits we fought for. We are concerned about their health; bus driving will kill from stress. I can't count the number of times I've heard that So-and-So retired, only to die within months. [...]

I'm grateful to have a good job, grateful to the public for supporting us, and looking forward to seeing my passengers on my next shift. In this, I am like most drivers. Some of us are grouches, and I'm sorry about that. But I have a suggestion for the public: Next time you're asked to bust the bus drivers, or for that matter any worker, ask yourself: Am I helping the ruling class in a race to the bottom?

Filmed outside of Senator Wyden's office on Dec 10th in NE Portland around 5:30PM
I arrived when the vigil was in process.
Organized by http://www.jwjpdx.orgThe Light Brigade was there and can be seen in the end of this video.

From the open publishing newswire:
Portland Solidarity Network Wins Campaign!
We fought with our friend Beth to force her landlord to return a stolen deposit!
Join Us For a Victory Celebration this Friday (9/21) at 6 PM at the Alberta Street Pub!

Great news! The Portland Solidarity Network (PDX Sol) has won our most recent campaign! Our friend Beth received a check for her full deposit from Brian Wannamaker, the target of our campaign, and it has been confirmed that the check has cleared, thereby meeting our campaign's demand! Brian, the owner and landlord of the Falcon Art Community building where Beth briefly lived, initially refused to return Beth's security deposit after she was forced to move out because of black mold in her apartment. Brian only relented and returned the deposit after PDX Sol spent several weeks engaging in direct action. Our victory proves that a network of community volunteers and supporters committed to solidarity with tenants and workers CAN produce real victories!

Beth initially got in contact with us after seeing our posters, and we took on her campaign with Beth as a member and active participant. We began by delivering a letter to the Falcon Art Community offices that demanded the return of her deposit in full. Thirty-four people came out to support Beth by crowding into the Falcon Art Community's office and handing over the demand letter. (Watch a video of the event here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2kqiDDr7o&feature=youtu.be) We continued our fight after the demand delivery by engaging in a campaign of direct action - a strategy that empowers individuals and their communities to directly confront those responsible for their exploitation without relying on lawyers or bureaucratic institutions. In the case of our campaign, PDX Sol and our supporters persisted in confronting Brian until he did the right thing and returned Beth's deposit. We relied on nothing more than the strength of our unified voice and the power that comes from public pressure.

From the open publishing newswire:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership's extraordinarily one-sided rules, which go beyond NAFTA in several ways, are intended to be a new floor in the ongoing effort to lock in the domination of industrialists and financiers through the multi-national corporations that they control. The negotiations among 11 countries are secret. That we know anything at all about it is due to leaks.

Imagine a world in which which labor safeguards, safety rules and environmental regulations will be struck down because a multi-national corporation's profits might be affected. A world in which measures to reign in financial speculation are illegal. A world in which the task of governments, codified in law, is to maximize corporate profits.

Haven't heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? There is good reason. It is a proposed trade agreement being secretly negotiated that would not only codify the one-sided rules heavily favoring corporate interests exemplified in the North American Free Trade Agreement, it would go beyond them. And many of the harshest rules proposed to be included in the TPP are being pushed by the Obama administration.

From the open publishing newswire:
On a daily basis, we are bombarded with messages in the corporate media that any European Union country defaulting on its debt would constitute armageddon. Greece/Ireland/Spain/choose your country must pay back the banks in full, no matter the social cost, we are told ad infinitum.

Argentina's government defaulted on odious debt and instead spent the money on investments and social services. Argentine workers took over their factories rather than let them be shut. That path was not an easy one, but Argentina's economy was the Western Hemisphere's fastest growing while wages rose and poverty declined... armageddon was not the result. No fire fell from the sky.

Quite the contrary, Argentines soon were far better off by saying no to the pitiless austerity that had been imposed on them.